


Protego

by watanuki_sama



Series: Steeped In Sin [2]
Category: Common Law
Genre: 5+1 Things, Demon!Wes, Gen, Some Swearing, Travis is protective, some violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-01
Updated: 2015-01-01
Packaged: 2018-03-04 15:56:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,481
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3073664
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/watanuki_sama/pseuds/watanuki_sama
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Five times Travis protected Wes, and one time he didn't have to.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Protego

**Author's Note:**

> Both the fic and the world are based on a series of tumblr posts by **allthatisbizarre** and **mizufallsfromkumo**. Thank you for the wonderful ideas, dearies!

_“Stop using him, and start protecting him. I know he thinks he doesn’t need it, but sometimes he does. Sometimes we all do.”_  
 _—Rachel Caine, Ghost Town_

\---

1.

\---

It’s not like Wes being a demon is a _secret_ , exactly. The detectives in RHD know, of course, because they all work together and Cap put out a memo before this whole thing started so people wouldn’t freak out or anything. A good number of people in other departments know, because cops gossip and it spreads fast, and most of the officers are in the loop. Jonelle definitely knows, considering all the times Wes has ended up in a drawer because someone exorcised him and his body needs to be kept cold while it waits for him to return. (It happens more often than one would think.) And Kendall knows—she probably hacked the email memo the captain sent out, and there was that whole misunderstanding about what demonic energy would do to her computers when she first started.

So it’s not like it’s a _secret_. It’s just not something that’s really out there in the general public. Better that way, really. A lot of things have changed over the years, but demons still have a bit of a horrible rep, and it’s just that much easier to work if witnesses and suspects alike aren’t freaking out all over the place.

So it’s more of an annoyance than anything when Kendall shoots him an email that leads to a blog that exposes Wes as a demon. There’s a picture and everything, Wes with his eyes all black, which could have been doctored except there’s a timestamp and Travis remembers that day. There’d been dead children involved and that didn’t make _anyone_ happy.

“Damn,” he murmurs, leaning back in his chair. He scrolls through the blogpost, which doesn’t add much more than the picture. There’s Wes’s name, and a few screenshots from newspaper articles about cases they’d solved. But mostly there are a lot of speculative questions about just what, exactly, a _demon_ is doing on the LAPD, and maybe the demon hasn’t moved quite so far from its roots and is using the LAPD as a cover for nefarious deeds.

That gets Travis’s blood boiling. As if Wes would—!

The demon in question wanders over, a cup of coffee in his hand. “What’s up? You look you’re thinking about doing something reckless and idiotic.”

Travis clicks away from the email. “It’s nothing.”

“You know how stupid it is to lie to a demon, right? I hope you do realize and you’re not seriously that stupid, though I will admit, I have my doubts.” Wes frowns. “Is this about the email? That blog post?”

“You know about that?”

“Kendall Cc’d me. Don’t you ever read the headers on your emails?”

“That would be a no.” Travis scowls at his computer again, like somehow the machine is the one at fault here. “Aren’t you upset? I would be.”

“It’s annoying, but it happens.” Wes waves an absentminded hand, pulling a file off the top of the stack. “It’ll blow over, and everything will be fine.”

Everything is not fine. When they pull up to the station the next morning, there are two dozen people outside. Some of them have signs. All of the signs are protests about demons. Or Bible verses. Those are always popular at these sorts of things.

“Just perfect,” Travis growls, slamming the door as he emerges from the car. Wes shoots him a nasty glare for the door and merely shrugs.

“It happens,” is all he says, and starts heading for the building.

Travis tells himself it’s fine. If Wes, who has a hair-thin temper on the best of days, says it’s nothing to worry about, then Travis will reign himself in. They just have to get inside, and then he can forget all about these idiots.

And then the people start shouting. And it’s nasty, horrible stuff that makes Travis cringe. If these people think a demon is bad news, they’re obviously not listening to the words coming out of their own mouths. His fists curl at his sides—he just wants to shut them up, just make them _stop_ —

“It’s fine,” Wes murmurs, so very calm despite everything. He takes a sip of his coffee, eyeing the protesters blandly. “Just keep walking.”

Travis grits his teeth and stomps forward.

The protesters part like the Red Sea, because the potential wrath of a bona-fide demon is too much to bear, apparently (but not enough of a deterrent to keep them from spouting their verbal abuse, obviously), so the two of them almost make it to the front doors without anyone laying so much as a finger on them. Which is kind of a shame, because Travis would love to arrest just one of these assholes for assault.

Then he sees, in the corner of his eye, the glint of glass, and a sharp motion like someone is throwing something. Travis doesn’t hesitate; he puts his body between the protester and his partner, a shield between Wes and whatever’s being aimed his way.

He gets a face full of water.

As he stands there blinking, the entire crowd goes silent. There’s just Travis, and a quiet sound behind him, something between a hiss and a sizzle. Blinking water out of his eyes, Travis turns, in time to see Wes cradling his coffee cup in the crook of his elbow and pressing a hankie against his burned hand.

“I got hit by the splash,” Wes says as explanation, and suddenly it clicks. _Holy_ water. Duh. Because if you’re going to a demon protest, you want to come fully armed.

He turns—slowly, so he doesn’t spray more water everywhere—but the guy who threw the holy water is gone, slipped away into the crowd while Travis was distracted. Travis curses and glares at the rest of the crowd.

He doesn’t know what look is on his face, but they all take a collective step back.

A hand wraps around his elbow. “We’re going to be late,” Wes informs him, steering him away from the crowd towards the front doors. He doesn’t say anything else, and Travis doesn’t say anything either. He’s afraid he’d just go off on Wes for just standing there and _taking_ it—!

Travis heads to the locker room to dry off. He’s cooled a little by the time he’s done, and he heads back to the squad room in a much better mood. And there, sitting next to his computer, is a fresh cup of coffee, and Wes is studying his case file like it’s the most interesting thing in the world. 

Travis picks up the mug and grins into the rim, and takes Wes’s silent thank you as it was meant to be received—with no acknowledgement other than the knowledge that they both know what it’s for and will never mention it again.

(At lunch, he slips away and asks Kate and Amy for a favor. The next morning when they arrive, the protestors have all been herded away from the front doors, well beyond throwing distance. He owes both of them lunch for that, but it’s a price he’s willing to pay.)

\---

2.

\---

By the end of the week, it seems like Wes might be right. There are still protestors out there every morning when they arrive, but the numbers dwindle a little more every day, and not being able to throw anything seems to have deterred a few more of them. This whole thing could blow over in just a couple more weeks, and then they won’t have to deal with any more of this crap.

Which is a good thing, because it’s seriously ticking him off.

“Why isn’t this bothering you at _all?_ ” he demands, furiously chomping down on his burrito. The burrito gives him a momentary distraction, because it is delicious and this guacamole is amazing, but then the anger and frustration comes right back to the front. “Why are you so chill?”

“I’ve had worse,” Wes says with a shrug, flipping through his phone. He eats, sometimes, but today is not one of those days. “This is nothing.”

Well, sure, to a guy who’s been to Hell and back, this is probably small beans. But it’s pissing Travis off.

“There are a thousand demons in LA,” he rants, tearing off another bite of his burrito. “Why gant tey bovver one’f _‘em_?”

“You talking with your mouth full is absolutely disgusting,” Wes says without looking up from his phone. “And considering all I’ve seen, that’s saying something.”

Travis sticks out his tongue, burrito and all.

“Put it back in your mouth or I’ll throw your burrito on the ground,” Wes says, typing at his phone. Travis retracts his tongue.

“I just don’t see why they gotta be picking on _you_ ,” Travis grumbles, glowering at the tortilla in his hands.

“Well, it _was_ my picture on the blog page.”

“You’re the only good demon in this city,” Travis snaps back. “Let them bother one of the other ones.”

Wes gives him a look.

Travis shifts. “Fine. You’re not _good_. You’re…okay-ish.”

“That’s better.” Wes returns to his phone.

What happens next really can’t be considered Travis’s fault.

A man steps up to their table. Travis can tell before he even opens his mouth that this guy is going to be an asshole.

And then he _does_ open his mouth, and the first word he says is, “ _Exorcizamus_ —”

That’s also the _only_ word he gets out, because Travis jumps up and punches him. He’s pissed off about this whole situation and now some random fuckwad is spouting exorcisms while he’s eating lunch? No way.

The guy goes down, clutching his face. Wes also leaps to his feet, but instead of glaring at the guy on the ground, he’s giving Travis the evil eye. “Travis! You can’t just go around punching people!”

And seriously, of all the things Wes could have said, _that_ was not what Travis was expecting. He gapes at his partner. “What? Are you serious? It was self-defense!”

Wes crosses his arms. “He wasn’t doing a thing to you, self-defense isn’t a viable excuse.”

“Fine! It was just defense, then!” Travis grabs the guy’s arm and hauls him to his feet. “Whatever. We’ll figure it out when we get him to the station.”

Wes sighs. “I’m not charging him, Travis.”

“What?”

“I’m not charging him,” Wes repeats patiently.

“Why the hell _not?_ ”

“Because this happens. It’s not big deal.”

“You keep _saying_ that!” Travis makes a frustrated motion with his free hand. “ _Why_ do you keep _saying_ that?!”

“Because it’s true.” Wes drops his arms and puts them on his hips, turning his _Travis you’re in trouble_ face up by ten. “Every few decades, someone figures out who I am, and there are protests and holy water and people spouting exorcisms they found online.” He pauses, makes a face. “Better than the lynchings and burnings, let’s be honest.”

Travis just stares at him.

Wes shrugs. “It all passes, Travis. People in this city don’t have that long of attention spans. They all move onto something else.”

Travis’s grip tightens on the guy’s arm. “That doesn’t mean you should just take it while it happens.”

Wes sighs again, and shakes his head in that way that says _You’re such a child, I forget how young you are_ , and Travis really hates that. “Just let the man go, Travis.”

Travis grits his teeth, but there’s not much he can do if Wes isn’t going to press charges. And if he tries to pursue this, the guy could charge _him_ with something, because Wes has a point, it really wasn’t self-defense.

He huffs. “Fine.” He releases the guy, giving him a small shove away. “Go on, get out of here before he gets pissed and changes his mind.”

The guy holds his bloody nose and glares at Wes, undisguised loathing on his face. Then the guy spits, bloody saliva landing right on the toe of Wes’s shoe, and Travis just about changes his mind right there.

But Wes merely picks up a napkin and wipes his shoes off, with a quiet, “It happens,” and Travis just feels helpless.

\---

3.

\---

“Are you _serious?_ ”

Travis glances up, because Wes sounds both pissed and annoyed, which is never a good combination. Wes is scowling at his car, so Travis follows his gaze.

“Oh, wow.”

The driver’s side window is smashed. Glass litters the pavement and is scattered on the seat, and it crunches unpleasantly when Travis follows Wes to the vehicle.

“Seriously?” Wes glares at the broken glass, and if looks could kill the glass would melt away. “I just got this car.”

“Dude, you got it like two years ago,” Travis mutters, holding his phone up so he can take pictures of the damage.

“Exactly.” Wes waves his hands, clearly upset. “I _just_ got it.”

“That’s not—” Oh, wait. Right. Immortal demon. “Fair enough.” He changes angles and snaps a few more pictures. “You have insurance, right?”

“Of course I have insurance, only an idiot doesn’t have insurance.” Wes peers into the car’s interior, the scowl on his face deepening at the sight inside. “Are you _kidding_ me?”

“What?” Travis peers over his partner’s shoulder, but he doesn’t see anything missing. In fact, it looks exactly like it did when they went inside to interview their witness twenty minutes ago, aside from the broken glass. “It doesn’t look like they took anything.”

“Exactly!” Wes waves an indignant arm. “They didn’t even _take_ anything! This is just petty vandalism! What kind of criminals _are_ these?”

Travis’s brain lurches a little. “Wait, wait, you’re upset because they _didn’t_ take anything?”

Wes huffs, glaring at the car again. “If they’re going to break into the car, they should at least have the decency to _take_ something. This is…just…criminals have no standards anymore!”

“Man, sometimes it’s really funny when you get like this. It’s way too easy to forget you’re a cop.” Travis shakes his head, slides his phone into his pocket, and heads for the other side of the car. “I mean, ranting about the quality of the criminals who broke your window? That’s fantastic. I have to tell Kendall.”

Wes rolls his eyes and grumbles something unflattering, opening his door.

Travis climbs inside, leaning over to help brush glass off the seat. Not that it will affect Wes, physically, the cuts won’t bother him at all, but he’d be pissed about ripping up his suit, and a pissy demon means a really bad day on Travis’s end.

And as he’s leaning over, he sees something in the corner of his eye. He blinks, turns his head, and in an instant he’s no longer amused, he’s _furious_.

“Don’t lean into the car,” he snaps, and Wes must hear something in his voice, because normally he’d get annoyed at being ordered around, but this time he just pauses, leaning against the doorframe.

Travis’s hands tremble when he pulls his knife out—from anger, not fear—but they’re steady enough to cut a ragged slash through the devil’s trap painted on the ceiling. Wes eyes the symbol, and his eyes flicker black, just a flicker-flash between blinks, but his face doesn’t change.

They finish clearing the glass in silence, and it isn’t until Wes is seated and the doors are closed that he speaks. “It—”

“If you tell me it happens, I swear I’ll punch you.” He just wants to…how _dare_ they? How dare they come after his partner like this? Wes hasn’t _done_ anything, he’s one of the good guys!

Wes stays silent. This time, it’s Travis who breaks it. “This was meant for you.”

Wes directs his eyes to the broken trap. “Well, _obviously_.”

“No, I meant, this was _meant_ for you.” Travis runs his hands through his hair, anger and adrenaline making him jittery. “You think someone just _happened_ to put a devil’s trap in _this_ particular car? No, they knew it was yours, and they knew what it would do. It was a pointed attack. That means someone is following you.”

Wes squeezes the steering wheel, and there’s that flicker-flash of black in his eyes again. “I know you don’t want to hear this,” he says tightly, “but it happens. If we just ignore it, it will go away.”

“And what if it doesn’t, huh? What if it just keeps escalating? If I hadn’t been here you’d be helpless to anyone who came along with a bad intention.” Travis resists the urge to hit his partner for his foolishness. Mostly because hitting a demon would hurt _him_ more than it would hurt Wes. “Tell me honestly, in all the times this sort of thing has happened, can you _truly_ tell me it’s never escalated to the point where it’s gotten _bad?_ ”

Wes’s silence is answer enough.

“Yeah, I thought so.” Travis stares out the windshield, hands clenched into fists. He can feel his nails digging into his palms. “I’m not gonna sit by and let some random asshole target you, Wes. No way in hell.”

The demon doesn’t say anything. He just starts the car and pulls away, and his eyes never move to the devil’s trap above his head or his partner at his side.

\---

4.

\---

When Travis gets a text from Wes that simply reads _‘911 sos come now emgcy’_ , he drops everything. He breaks half a dozen road laws on the way to the hotel, jumps the stairs three at a time, and runs down the hall to the right door. He doesn’t even bother knocking, just whips out his gun and kicks the door down and rushes inside.

Wes is sitting on the edge of his bed doing the crossword from the morning paper.

“The _fuck_ , Wes?” Travis is literally out of breath from running up here, and Wes is just chilling? “Was this some sort of emergency drill, you bastard?”

“I couldn’t get out,” Wes says blandly, filling in one of his words. He points at the broken door with his pen. “They know where I live.”

Travis follows the pointing pen and sees what he missed before. There’s a symbol scratched into the surface of the door, just above the handle. Small enough he didn’t even notice in his haste. It’s not a devil’s trap—this is swirls and lines and he’s never seen it before.

“What is it?” he asks, peering closer. It looks harmless enough, but he pulls out his knife and scratches a line through it anyway. Because Wes called him over, so it’s obviously _not_ harmless.

Wes folds up the paper with an exaggerated care that suggests he’s reaching that line, the invisible one between Wes-the-cop and the demon below. “It’s Enochian.”

“Yeah?” Travis scratches another line through the thing, just to be on the safe side. “I thought that was for angels.”

“It’s the language of angels,” Wes corrects, “so it can be used against them, but it can be effective against demons as well.” He comes to stand beside Travis, looking at the symbol on the door. “I need you to go out and look for more.”

Travis looks at him blankly. “More?”

Wes gives him a look. “They found out where I _live_ , Travis. Do you really think all they had planned was a sigil to lock me in my room?”

“Well, when you put it like _that_ …” Travis backs out of the hotel room. Wes comes to the doorway and stops, watching his progress. “Let’s see what we have…”

Travis paces the hallway, peering at the carpets and the walls and the ceilings with piercing scrutiny. He refuses to miss something just because he was careless. And his thoroughness pays off; he finds a sigil drawn on the wall, hidden behind a decorative planter.

“I’ve got one!” he calls out.

Wes pokes his head into the hall. “What’s it look like?”

“Uh…” Travis studies the thing. “It’s kind of like…a squiggle? And there’s these two little prongy things at the top, and two dots, and a horizontal line going between the dots.”

Silence.

Travis looks behind him. “Wes?”

The blonde is staring at the wall, clenching the doorframe, and even from here Travis can see the tightness of his jaw. “…There will be two of them,” he says, tension thrumming in his words. “Find the other one once you’ve destroyed that one. They’ll be in a line from one another.”

Travis scratches out the sigil and heads to the opposite side of the hallway, finding the second sign carved below an ugly painting of a lighthouse. As soon as he gives the all-clear, Wes comes to join him. His eyes are all black.

“Let me guess,” Travis says, putting his knife away. “The sigils aren’t _good_ sigils.”

“They’re a matched pair,” Wes explains, staring at the scratched-out carving. “They’re activated when a target walks between them. Like a trip wire.”

Like a trip wire. Oh, wow. Travis looks at the sigils again, his stomach dropping. “That’s…” He doesn’t even know what to say. This is going way too far.

Wes exhales, slowly. “They know where I live,” he growls, and his hands are clenched into fists. “Now I’m getting angry.”

Travis is pissed too. But he’s also worried, and a little bit afraid.

He grabs Wes’s arm. “Come on, let’s go.” And he knows the only reason he manages to drag Wes onto the elevator is because Wes allows him to, but Wes is allowing it, so Travis counts that as a win.

He does make a bit of a scene downstairs, because apparently one of the other residents on Wes’s floor called management about the whole kicking-doors-in-and-scratching-up-the-walls thing, but Travis points out that people got into the hotel and carved dangerous sigils harmful to one of their clients into the walls and doors without any of the staff knowing or stopping them, and that could make them liable for all sorts of things. Management backs down pretty quickly after that and promises Travis doesn’t have to pay for the damage.

As soon as they’re done, Travis drags Wes out of the hotel. When they’re firmly ensconced in Wes’s car, he says, “You’re staying with me tonight.” _Where I can keep an eye out on you_ is unspoken, but it lingers in the air.

Wes just nods, glaring out the window, and his eyes are black and empty as a bottomless well.

\---

5.

\---

For the record, letting Wes act as bait and be captured is _not_ an idea Travis endorses in any way, shape, or form. It’s not even Travis’s idea.

Wes comes up with it, soon after the hotel incident, sitting on Travis’s couch with his hands folded in front of him. “They’re coming after me,” he points out in his reasonable voice, the one that is very logical and oh-so-slightly condescending. The one that makes Travis itch with frustration and he just wants to hit things. “They’ll come after me anyway. We might as well let them get me, and then they’ll take me right to the people behind all of this.”

Travis is against the plan every step of the way. But Wes is utterly confident everything will work out, and the captain is swayed to his side because Wes uses his reasonable voice on the cap, too.

So here he is, creeping through the halls of an empty warehouse with a S.W.A.T. team at his back and more covering the other exits. (Why’s it always gotta be abandoned warehouses, huh? Why can’t one of these days the bad guys be in a nice penthouse apartment with a view of the bay? This is just tiresome.)

He hears Wes first. Not the words, but the sharp rumble of his voice, and he can tell even from here that Wes is in full lecture mode. Travis rolls his eyes. Great. If the kidnappers didn’t want to kill Wes before, they _certainly_ want to do it now, based solely on Travis’s own experiences with a lecturing Wes.

And then he gets close enough to actually _hear_ what Wes is saying, and he just wants to drop his face in his hands.

“—hotel was _inspired_ , really,” Wes is saying, sounding mildly impressed. “I mean, I had no idea there were humans out there who knew such complex Enochian. Kudos to you. But the exorcism? Jumping out and shouting an exorcism in a busy street in the middle of the day? _Really?_ Did you _honestly_ think that would work? Because if you did you’re stupider than you look.”

An unfamiliar male voice says, “Hey, we were smart enough to find your car.”

Travis winces. _Not the car, don’t bring up the car…_

Wes scoffs derisively. “The car? Oh, do _not_ get me started on the car.”

Travis supposes it’s a good thing the S.W.A.T. team decides to go in now, because if he has to listen to one more damn rant about the goddamn car, he’ll shoot Wes himself. Swooping in to the rescue is a much better option.

So yes, much better to go in, shouts and commands drowning out anything Wes may or may not be ranting about the stupid car.

He leads his little squad of S.W.A.T. towards Wes, because he’s on the aptly named ‘Retrieval Squad’, taking in the surroundings as he goes. There are three humans off to one side, an older woman and two jock-types, promptly surrounded by guns and agents. There’s a table full of demon-torturing paraphernalia; holy water, salt, knives, and even an angel blade (Travis wonders how these folks got their hands on _that_ ).

And there—there’s Wes, trussed to a huge metal frame in the shape of a devil’s trap. Instead of looking positively grateful for being rescued, he’s glowering at Travis, because Wes is an ornery contrary bastard like that.

“What the hell are you doing here?” the demon snaps as Travis’s little Retrieval Squad rushes up.

“Rescuing you, babe.” Travis curses. _Manacles_. They used fucking _manacles_. Who the hell even _has_ manacles anymore? “Remember the plan?”

“You came in too early, Travis.” Wes turns his deathly glower at the cluster of humans getting arrested and read their rights. “They didn’t even get to hurt me.”

Travis’s stomach clenches unpleasantly. He ducks his head and pretends to study the manacles around Wes’s ankles. “Hurting you wasn’t part of the plan, baby.”

“Yeah, but now we’ll only get them on kidnapping and harassment.” Wes sighs, sounding put out. “That’s hardly anything.”

“That’s very much something, Wes, you just have no sense of perspective.” Travis hops to his feet and desperately deflects the conversation. “So riddle me this, if you’re tied to a devil’s trap while inside a devil’s trap, do the two traps cancel each other out?”

The look Wes sends him could fill a thousand-page dissertation titled _All The Ways Travis Marks Is A Stupid Dumbass_. “Of _course_ not, idiot, you can’t negate a trap just by doubling it—”

Which successfully gets Wes off the whole torture thing as he lectures Travis about the way devil’s traps work. Travis groans and makes the appropriate comments, but inside he’s thinking he’d listen to a million lectures, just so long as it meant Wes was still there to give them. He’s supposed to protect his partner, and to have Wes just _taken_ like that, even if it was part of the plan…

He doesn’t relax until Wes is off the stupid frame and out of the devil’s trap. Doesn’t feel his stomach unclench until he wraps his arm around Wes’s shoulder and Wes flashes black eyes at him and it’s just—

He’s not used to Wes being vulnerable. To being in a place where he _can_ get hurt. He doesn’t like it, not one little bit.

But Wes is here, and he’s fine. Travis is going to make sure it stays that way.

\---

+1.

\---

“So,” Travis says, studying his menu. “You might be right.”

Wes frowns at his own menu. “I’m right about a lot of things. Be more specific.”

“Don’t get so cocky, you’re right about _some_ things.” Travis decides on the Double Slammer, because double the patties mean double the _deliciousness_ , and closes his menu. “But you might have been right about the protestors. That it would die out eventually.”

Today was the first day since that stupid blog post where they’d gone to work and been met with not a single protestor.

“I told you it would.” Wes is still frowning as he scans the laminated pages. “Arresting the main instigators helped. Do _any_ of these meals come with sides other than fries?”

“The fries here are amazing, man, don’t knock them till you’ve tried them.” Travis sits back, playing with the straw in his Coke. “And yeah, arresting them probably had a lot to do with it. You’re welcome, by the way. I’m sure you meant to say that and it got lost along the way.”

Wes’s eyes flick up to peer at him over the menu. “For what?”

“Well, for arresting them and saving your life, of course.”

One pale eyebrow goes up incredulously. “You didn’t arrest them.”

“Sure I did.”

“I was right there, you didn’t arrest _anyone_.”

Okay, technically that’s true. “Yeah, but I led the charge, so I should get all the credit.”

“If we’re taking credit for things we didn’t do, then I deserve most of it. I was fantastic bait that ended with you leading the charge.”

“Yeah, but you were trussed up at the time, so it totally doesn’t count.”

Wes opens his mouth to retort, pausing only because the waitress comes up at that point to take their orders. Travis places his, Wes tries and fails to get something other than fries with his burger, and she bounces off with their menus. 

“I talked to Kendall this morning,” Travis says, nonchalantly veering the conversation away from all the ways his heroics the other day don’t actually count. “She says the blog that started this, the one that made the crazy fanatics, you know, spiral out of control, is down.”

The eyebrow goes back up. “Is it now?”

“Uh-huh.” Travis takes a sip of soda. “Apparently it got hit with some virus or something. I wasn’t really listening. You know how I get when she starts talking code, my eyes just glaze over.”

“I see.” The other eyebrow goes up, and Wes’s lips curl ever-so-slightly. “And did you or Kendall have anything to do with the website going down?”

Travis gasps, clutching a hand to his chest. “Wes! Of _course_ not! How could you _say_ such a thing?”

The demon gives him a flat look. “You know I can tell when you’re lying, right?”

“Wes.” Travis shakes his head, putting on his most innocent face. “I am as innocent as a newborn babe.”

Wes snorts into his water and rolls his eyes.

The conversation veers to more mundane topics until the food comes. The waitress tells them to enjoy their meals and heads off, and Wes picks up a fry. “These better be as good as you rave,” he warns, an invisible threat lurking mockingly in the words. He brings the fry to his mouth—

“Wes, wait! Don’t eat that!” Travis leaps across the table, snatching the fry out of Wes’s hands.

The demon stares at him as though he may have quite possibly lost his mind. “What the _hell?_ ”

“You can’t eat that!” Travis shoves the fry into his mouth and reaches over, taking another fry right off Wes’s tray. 

Wes moves his tray a safe distance away. “Why not?”

“Because of the salt, man, you can’t eat the salt!” Travis makes another grab for the fries, and succeeds in getting two more because it really isn’t that big of a table.

A smile tugs at Wes’s lips, somewhere between annoyed and amused. “This is the wrong kind of salt, Travis.”

That really only stops Travis for like half a second. “Still, man, better safe than sorry. I should eat them all.”

Wes crumples a napkin from the dispenser and throws it at Travis’s head. “If you wanted more fries, you should have ordered more, don’t try to steal mine.”

“I’m saving your life here, man, you really should trust me on this one.”

And so it goes. Wes eats some of the fries, then allows Travis to eat the rest, which Travis does with great enthusiasm, because these fries are _delicious_ , okay, they’re absolutely fantastic. The conversation turns, and turns again, and at one point Travis kicks Wes under the table and then Wes flicks his hand and makes Travis’s Coke spill into his lap.

Wes is safe, and everything is back to normal, and Travis really can’t ask for more.

**Author's Note:**

> According to Google Translate, ‘protego’ means ‘protect, defend, hide, cover, guard against, guard from’ in Latin. It seemed fitting. If anyone knows Latin and this is wrong, please let me know.


End file.
